Online spaces like the Well, Usenet newsgroups, and MUDs (multi-user dungeons) have gained interest among researchers, educators and business people as objects of study, design, and commercial application. The research community has been particularly interested in the design and use of such systems to support groups of people collaborating. Much of their focus has been placed on understanding the interdependence of social and technical elements in a design space to successfully support online social groups. More recently, the World Wide Web has been drawn to online social groups as part of its evolution and growth. Much of this interest has been fueled by interests in capitalizing on them in new business paradigms.
These developments are bringing the Web to an important and new stage in its development. While the first two stages can be characterized as valuing the importance of information and transactions, respectively, the third stage can be characterized as valuing the role that people play on the Web. Yet, much of the commercial efforts to enhance the participation and interactions of people, in particular, to create online social groups at Web sites, have taken a tools focus (e.g., chat tools, bulletin boards, and instant messaging) rather than the broader socio-technical focus that has led to successes in formation of social groups for the Internet and for some e-commerce sites (e.g., Motley Fool and eBay).